Don't Think
by Sare Liz
Summary: Sara is grieving too long and too hard, according to TPTB. This is something approximating therapeutic, sort of. - post maelstrom, two days before Sara's periculum


Title: Don't Think  
Author: Sare Liz, teknovamp@yahoo.com  
Series: none  
Rating: PG-13, angst; Post Maelstrom, two days before Sara's periculum.  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Archive: teknovamp  
Author's Notes: Guess what song I wrote this too? Why, yes. Grant Lee Buffalo's 'Honey Don't Think'. Can I just say that in large doses the song is horribly depressing? Well, it is. Also of note, I'm really not anti Conchobar. He's a rather nice guy and I can admit that, despite the fact that I'm a IN/SP shipper.  
Summary: Sara is grieving too long and too hard, according to TPTB. This is something approximating therapeutic, sort of.  
  
*  
  
It's the luck of the draw  
How you wound up with me I don't know how at all  
. . .  
Honey don't think about it too long now  
Honey don't think, you're libel to figure me out  
  
*  
  
"Sara."  
  
His voice sounded from behind her as she'd morosely stared out the window and she screamed at the quiet tones, jerking around to see him standing there, whole, complete, beautiful. He looked so calm - his eyes had none of their usual twinkle, but just the steady glow that had always been beneath. He looked so solid, like she could touch his face, wrap her arms around his neck, press up against his chest and be held there by his arms instead of attempting and feeling nothing but air. He looked so wonderfully *alive*, but he wasn't.  
  
"Now, love, none of that."  
  
Her eyes were impossibly wide and shinning with unshed tears that and rising instantly, unbidden. She couldn't remember feeling this jaggedly incomplete before, not even when her father died. Seeing him right then standing in her apartment like he might have been was something close to the last straw. Insanity was looking less like an unhealthy state of mind and more like a blessed relief.  
  
"Hush. Hush, there. No need to cry."  
  
She might have laughed, if she'd been physically able. Instead she swallowed past the lump in her throat and tried to point out why there was a perfectly good opportunity to cry. "You're dead."  
  
"Aye, but that's rather a technicality at this point, isn't it?"  
  
Her breath caught as she saw the sparkle in his eye that she missed, the teasing tone of his voice that she'd only just begun to adore.  
  
She closed her eyes tight, sealing them against the tears that were threatening to fall and tried to calm herself, to inhale deeply but it only served as a shaky ragged breath she couldn't seem to exhale. Moments before she would have done anything to have gotten him back, for just a moment more and now that he was here she couldn't take it. It was like a wound, a deep gash into your body that had been sealed and ichy but one that was now open and raw and painful beyond the laws of reason. She'd wished away her life, just to see him and now that he was here she couldn't bear to look.   
  
"Why are you here?"  
  
"So you can let go."  
  
Her eyes blearily parted as a stray tear seeped it's way down her cheek. "What?"  
  
"You need to let go of me, Sara."  
  
He was the first time in her adult life that she'd really been in love. It was good and it was beautiful and it was the thing that fairy tales were made of, and there wasn't a single way in hell that she'd ever get over that.   
  
"I loved you."  
  
"And I loved you, but we weren't meant for the ever after. I know you'll carry me with you and that's as it should be, but you were meant for greater things and you know it."  
  
Disbelief was written across her features as she shook her head, as the tears began their freefall. "I didn't want any of that. I just wanted you."  
  
"I told you, Sara, twasn't meant. We were on borrowed time as it was. But I know what you do want, and you'll get it, I swear to you, you will."  
  
"And what do I want?" It was hard to speak because of the tears in her throat but it was harder even to think. She knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted never to have found the Witchblade. She wanted to have met him under different circumstances. She wanted not to be a cop. She didn't want to know people who wanted to kill her and she certainly didn't want to know people who didn't want to kill her but would if they got the chance, just on principle.  
  
"You want someone to love who'll outlast you."  
  
It was a heartbeat of silence and then she collapsed to the ground because she wanted that too, and it was horrible. For once, she wanted to be the one who died on someone else. She wanted someone to grow old with, or if not old, then just to survive the years with. Finally having tasted what being in love could be, she wanted it forever.   
  
"Why couldn't that have been you?"  
  
She looked up at him, daring him to respond, wishing that she could will it to be different. She didn't care at all that it might be different next time because it was right now that she cared about, the fact that there would be a next time didn't even really register.  
  
"Because I'm not him."  
  
She didn't hear his excuses, instead bowing her head and giving into her grief. It was so much easier than trying to forget, and she wouldn't forget - she'd never forget.  
  
She ignored him calling her name just as she ignored Death after him. She didn't move, welcoming whatever blow he would deal her but found herself in his black clad arms instead. He picked her up gently, as though she weighed nothing at all, still calling her name and silently gratified when her tears found their way to his neck, bared by his lowered hood.  
  
Her eyes never opened to see whose shirt absorbed her tears, to see who carried her to her bed and held her in it. They never opened because she knew who it was and who it would never be and she couldn't think about the difference just then. Her eyes didn't open, too, because she didn't want to have to look into foreign eyes and see anything familiar. She didn't want to give up the hope that blow would be dealt.  



End file.
